“Bolutu, this way!”
Pazel put on a burst of speed. He reached the tonnage hatch and climbed out onto the scaffold and then the mast. Up he went, much faster than Thasha: climbing was perhaps the only physical activity in which he outdid her.
Past the upper gun deck, the main deck, the topdeck where they had all stood and worked together a few short hours ago. Then cries rang out from the shore. Pazel glanced up-and thanked the Gods.
Fifty or sixty dlomu, mostly fighting men in uniform, had just stormed onto the quay. They were arguing, some quite heatedly. Several were fitting arrows to bows.
From the topdeck, Bolutu cried out: “Shoot him down, brothers! Shoot him, for the love of Alifros!” Seconds later Fiffengurt’s voice joined Bolutu’s, urging much the same.
Then came a general shout of alarm. Pazel looked up and saw Arunis jump from the mast. He had reached a height where it extended well past the Chathrand’s rail toward the quay. The distance looked impossibly great: Arunis, he thought, was going to fall short of the quay, plummet some 150 feet and strike hard stone, close to where Pazel had crawled out through the hull.
But it did not happen. Arunis cleared the gap with ease. The soldiers caught him, supported him-and then (Pazel felt a sudden, powerful urge to leap himself) stood back from him and raised their weapons in salute.
The mage’s voice came from below, faint but clear: “Bring a horse, and send another rider ahead to announce me. I have business in the Upper City, and I do not wish to be stopped and questioned at the gates.”
Someone darted away through the crowd. Arunis staggered over to one of the broken lampposts and leaned against it while the soldiers milled about him, offering him water, bread, someone’s coat. Arunis touched his leg, and the gaunt hand came away bloody. Then he felt his jaw, and winced. As if remembering, he turned and looked up at the mast where Pazel clung. Youth and sorcerer locked eyes for a moment. Then Arunis smiled, nodded to him almost cordially, and turned his back on the Chathrand.
“Shameless, interfering, cow-headed dullard!”
Lady Oggosk cracked her walking stick over Pazel’s back. Pazel, climbing over the tonnage hatch rail, took the pain as his due. Facing Hercol and Fiffengurt, as he did when he stood upright, hurt considerably more.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You sure as five-week fishcakes are,” said the quartermaster. “Why couldn’t you do as you were told, just once?”
“That would not be Pazel Pathkendle, would it?” said Sandor Ott, who was studying his cracked-open pistol with some disappointment.
“He didn’t know what was happening,” said Thasha, climbing over the rail in turn.
“Be silent, you impious girl,” shrieked Oggosk. “Many who played their part did not know what was happening. The captain did not know, Sandor Ott did not know, Fiffengurt remained ignorant as a stump.”
“That’s a tad overstated, Duchess,” said Fiffengurt.
“Shut your mouth, you walking salt-dried carcass of a toad! Arunis escaped death because this boy defied you, and leaped on him before Stanapeth could strike. It’s true, my spell was a weakling’s charm. I held him not with iron but with thread, and I only managed that because I’d been spooling and hoarding my thread for thirteen years. Even so I knew the spell would break the instant anyone touched the mage. If not for this lovesick tarboy Stanapeth would have killed him with ease! We’d be standing around his corpse now, toasting our victory! Oh, damn you, damn your low Ormali blood-”
“Leave him alone,” said Thasha, her voice suddenly dangerous. Oggosk, to general amazement, obeyed.
Hercol turned to Sandor Ott. “I keep my promises,” he said, “even when no good can come of them.” With that he unbuckled Ott’s white knife from his belt and held it out, sheathed, to the spymaster.
Ott’s eyes were locked on Hercol’s. He took the blade without looking down. “You did well to ferret out that snake,” he said. “He was a greater threat than I ever understood. But we’ve learned this much: he still has cause to fear a blade. At least, certain blades.”
“And yet he bested us all,” said Hercol. “Rose had a good grip on his arm, but he lost two fingers when the mage produced a knife of his own. Lady Oggosk herself suffered blows-”
“Pah,” spat the old woman.
“And you, Thasha: let me see what that mace accomplished. Right away, if you please.”
Thasha reluctantly lifted the edge of her shirt. On her ribs were a wide, blackening bruise and two gashes, left by the teeth of the sorcerer’s mace.
“Fool!” said Hercol. “You climbed a spar with that? You might have lost consciousness and fallen to your death!”
“But I didn’t, did I?” said Thasha.
“Go to the surgery at once. Pathkendle, take her there, drag her. Chadfallow is already at work on the captain. Have him examine you, too, when he’s finished with Thasha. You may have a hard head-”
“A gargoyle would envy it!” said Lady Oggosk.
“-but I saw you strike those ceiling-planks. And there’s your fall into the hold as well. Go on.”
“Hercol,” said Thasha, “was Arunis telling the truth? Did my father know Syrarys… years before?”
“Nonsense!”
“You weren’t in Etherhorde when I was born,” said Thasha. “You were still in hiding with Empress Maisa. You never saw Clorisuela with child.”
“What of it? Go to surgery, I say, before you collapse.”
“Is Syrarys my mother, Hercol?”
“Thasha Isiq: as your martial tutor, I command you to seek treatment for that wound.”
“Come on,” said Pazel, touching her arm.
Thasha pulled her arm viciously away. She looked at Hercol for a long moment, and then moved slowly toward the hatch.
Pazel walked at her side. They did not speak as they descended to the orlop. Thasha marched aft with hands in fists. Ahead in surgery Rose gave a howl of pain. All at once Thasha stopped and turned to face Pazel, her eyes enraged and wet. A lock of her golden hair was pasted to her shoulder with someone’s blood.
Pazel stammered: “You know, to me-I mean, I don’t care whose daughter you-”
“Shut up.”
He waited. Thasha steadied herself against the wall. It would take hours to spit all the curses from that mouth, and she was not speaking, not saying a word. He wondered how much blood she’d already lost.
“I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?” said Pazel.
Thasha clamped a hand over his mouth. With that gesture they both grew still. Her hand tightened; she swayed closer to him. Then, not weeping but shaking from head to toe, and sighing with all that she had not said to him in weeks and could find no words for now, she was in his arms.
9. What Fulbreech glimpsed was not Felthrup, who by that time slept only in his closet. In all likelihood it was Bolutu’s veterinary bag. If he had taken it, the youth would have been startled to find inside a notebook with the very words the dlomu and Hercol had just spoken-“a bright day for Alifros,” etc.-written out like a playscript in Bolutu’s hand. -EDITOR.
THE EDITOR REFLECTS ON THE CONDUCT OF HIS HEROES
They are, of course, too young.
You know of what I speak. With the exposure of Greysan Fulbreech there can be no remaining (logical) impediment to a carnal encounter between Lady Thasha and Pazel Pathkendle. In dramatic terms such an encounter is almost obligatory. Neither youth is hormonally defective. Both have considered the possibility for months-and with unseemly specificity, in the case of Mr. Pathkendle. They show no signs of disease or contagion. And they have been supplied with a preposterous array of opportunities: a magic wall, no less, deflects all rival suitors from intruding on their presumably impending bliss.
But I repeat: it cannot happen. Said bliss cannot, and therefore does not, impend. They are too young.